More etchings from the stela, discovered in Montero in 2002 but not ‘translated’ until 2017

The writing includes elements of a North Eastern Palaeo-Hispanic script, Graeco-Iberian script, Proto-Sinaitic and Proto-Canaanite inscriptions, epigraphic South Arabian and Phoenician scripts, he writes in research published by journal Antiquity.

These cultures were active in the Iberian Peninsula during the Iron Age – so García Sanjuán believes they could have been made sometime between the third and ninth century BC.

One suggestion was that the stone was engraved in the 9th and 5th century BC, by illiterate locals who were replicating signs they had seen by foreigners passing through.

“Most likely Phoenicians coming from the eastern Mediterranean,” he said.